When I was at school, I sometimes used a trick to help me remember facts: I set them to a tune I knew well, and it worked! Desta Haile advocates something a bit similar for learning foreign languages. It certainly is a good idea to find a song you like and learn its lyrics, thus remembering useful vocabulary. She describes a process for this, but I found it unnecessarily detailed. You don't need all that information -- just do it!

There are a lot of interesting tidbits in here about how to learn languages, in general, not just through music, but the book also shares a lot of ideas for how to use music specifically, and how to incorporate language study into your daily habits. I also found the World Calendar very interesting, in which music and language learning-related holidays around the world are listed.

A well-structured book about a very useful idea.
Best for those who love music (who doesn't?) and have tried their rhythmic sense to make sense of language.
Good lists of songs for different languages and great tips to incorporate music into learning languages.

As a keen language learner and music lover, requesting an ARC of Languages Through Music was obviously a no-brainer for me. For years, even back to my high school days, I have incorporated music into my language studies, most often through my love of musical theatre. Listening to/reading the lyrics was a great comprehension exercise and a way to learn new vocabulary, while singing along provided some quick and easy speaking practice. I loved how this book introduced that idea to others. I also appreciated the focus on absorbing culture through the music in addition to the language itself. Some of the later chapters interested me a little less because they veered, to my mind, a bit too far off topic, so it felt like trying to flesh out a much shorter work. I also would have liked a little more content highlighting where music can cause problems in language learning: where words are pronounced differently in song compared to conversation and where words choices can be more poetic terms and not vocabulary used every day, or even impolite in daily life. Outlining these would not have detracted from the good points about using music for language study, but it would have advised readers on things to be aware of when they do. Those couple of points aside, though, this was a good work about a method of study that doesn't always get as much attention, so I am giving it 4 stars.